Minidiscs: Sony Hi-MD MD Walkman MZ-NH700
Eventually I became irritated with the lack of ability to directly download
recordings to a PC. I then got a Sony Hi-MD MD Walkman MZ-NH700. This
model came out in 2004. It has the ability to download recordings digitally
to a computer, as long as they were recorded in the Hi-MD format.
Sample: Hindi Class in 2007.
Sony Hi-MD MD Walkman MZ-NH700

One thing which strikes me as having bedeviled the Minidisc is Digital
Rights Management. It was due to paranoia about copying copyright music
that the first generation of Minidisc did not allow any digital downloading
of recordings. The second generation of Minidisc recorders (called Net-MD)
were also no improvement on simple MD recorders because of copyright
protection issues. Eventually, with Hi-MD, and after considerable protest
from users, the software which comes with the devices, called Sound
Stage, made it possible to save digital recordings from microphones,
and line in sources, as wave files on a computer.